


that where I am, there may ye be also

by mollivanders



Category: Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8043616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: He trudges through the snow, step after step, one simple thought driving his march.   Mercy is waiting. When he falls at her feet, a long moment of shock fills the room before Mercy tentatively rests her hands on his head.They can rest now.





	that where I am, there may ye be also

**Author's Note:**

> _Kit went into the hallway, leaving the kitchen door open behind her, drew back the bolt, and opened the door. A gaunt, ragged figure stood on the step, and as she shrank back a man pushed his way through the door and halted on the kitchen threshold. Judith suddenly let fall a wooden bowl with a clatter. Rachel, wiping her hands on her apron, came forward, peering in the dim light. "Can it be--John?" she breathed tremulously._
> 
> _The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy's lap._
> 
> Chapter Twenty, _The Witch of Blackbird Pond_
> 
> Requested by [dudeyoureavegetarian](https://dudeyoureavegetarian.tumblr.com/) on tumblr _ages_ ago, who wanted some fluffy Mercy/John fic. This was much harder to write than I anticipated, and then I also had a lot of RL stuff going on. At long last, here is a hopeful fic for them.

She did not know it was possible to wait this long for a person. All her life, everyone she has known has been around her. She has known the bounds of her life since she was a young child, and had never expected anything to change, but since the moment Holbrook stepped into her home, she has found herself waiting.

(She has been waiting so very long.)

+

He trudges through the snow, step after step, one simple thought driving his march.

_Mercy is waiting._

When he falls at her feet, a long moment of shock fills the room before Mercy tentatively rests her hands on his head.

They can rest now.

+

Mercy was exhausted. They had scrubbed the floors, polished the hearth, scoured the kitchenware, and the constant fire in the oven added to the general fatigue of preparing dinner for Dr. Bulkeley. Judith still seemed animated, as always, perhaps because of the doctor’s new pupil, but Mercy carried a tinge of worry at the edge of her exhaustion.

But as John Holbrook began to read, she felt her nerves calm. There was something very soothing in his voice and demeanor. Perhaps the evening would end well.

_“I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So thy poverty cometh as one that traveleth by the way, and thy necessity like an armed man.”_

(And somehow, for the first time, the world makes a promise of _more_.)

+

He is New England, born and bred, and he knows this land as well as any other young man.

But no other man has escaped from captivity into the blinding snow as he has, and no man is with him now. He worries about frostbite until he cannot feel his hands anymore, and he worries about being recaptured until he cannot see around him anymore. He is a man without aid, without friends, and almost lost to himself.

(But he is not, as it turns out, without a guide. Slowly, through the storm, his feet carry him home.)

+

It was more painful that she had realized it would be to watch Judith court John Holbrook.

(She never knew this kind of pain before.)

She has never begrudged her sister anything in life, and she does not begrudge her now. Tis sensible and right for John to like Judith, who is beautiful and lively and charming, and for him to overlook her own self completely. Tis nothing she would not expect, and truth be told, she would have been more surprised by the reverse.

(But the pain is a stone in her heart that weighs her down, separates her from the world.)

And when Judith rambles about how wonderful John is and how much she would like to marry him, Mercy cannot but agree with her sister.

Twould be nothing so right in the world, for they two.

But once, she catches Kit looking at her, on an evening when she is particularly avoiding conversation with William, and Mercy worries that perhaps she has given herself away. Kit is as lively as Judith, and as beautiful, but Mercy does not know how to hide from her as well.

(And though Kit never says anything, Mercy finds herself grateful for a companion in her secret.)

+

He has never been particularly good with words, for a man who wants to be a preacher, but it has never been an impediment until now, when faced with a lively young woman who tries to speak for him. He has never been so lost, and escaping to his books provides no comfort, as he longs to be where he is most at risk.

Somehow, he finds himself engaged, and not to the sister he has been trying to court.

(There is no one to blame, he supposes, except himself. At least his grief is his own, and his alone.)

Except - he thinks perhaps Kit might have puzzled out his secret. She seems to look at him in a secret way now, as if she knows.

(He never could understand her.)

Instead, he volunteers for the militia.

+

When William and Judith arrive home from the wedding before their parents and Kit, Mercy does not know what to think, but her sister flees upstairs before speaking a word to Mercy. It falls to William to explain what has happened, and that John Holbrook is missing and feared captured.

(Distantly, Mercy hears him. Distantly, she feels something break inside her.)

Distantly, she feels Kit tend to her and tuck her into her chair, while her mother disappears upstairs to her sister. Kit murmurs words of comfort, and sits beside her, humming a soft tune as she spins.

(Nobody else knows.)

When she falls ill, she barely notices.

+

Wethersfield reminds him so much of home at first that he is near homesick for his father and their farm, but Dr. Bulkeley soon buries him in enough reading that he thinks he will never finish. He is gratified though, and so excited by the task before him that he wakes early and goes a-bed late, burning as many candles as he ever did at home. He barely goes out except for Meetings until they are invited to dinner at Matthew Wood’s house.

He tries to keep up with the politics, but Matthew and Dr. Bulkeley are such powerful speakers and he does not yet know how to argue either of them with his point, and fears he has made an ass of himself before them both. When the elder daughter suggests a reading and Dr. Bulkeley puts him forward, however, he leaps at the chance.

As he reads, he catches a glimpse of Mercy watching him, pleasure shining out of her eyes, and something shifts in his heart.

(Something catches.)

_“They shall kiss the lips of him that answereth upright words. Prepare thy work without, and make ready thy things in the field, and after, build thine house.”_

_+_

She slowly rises out of the fog that covered her, slowly stumbles her way back to life. Before this year, she never dreamed of more, and now, she has nearly lost everything. A steady determination fills her now, waiting for her to take her place.

She can wait. She knows how to do that now.

(She does not know what she is waiting for, for everyone thinks John dead, and her own lost hope wraps itself around her heart.)

Still, she waits and prays. She listens to Kit’s dreams, and Judith’s plans, and struggles on despite the grief that surrounds her.

She waits, until a knock at the door startles her heart.

“See who it is, Kit,” her mother said. “I don't want to take my hands out of this flour.”

(The promise starts again.)

__Finis_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: The readings are a continuation of Proverb 24 from the book, using the Geneva Bible which is likely the version the Wood household would have had as Puritans. The title is from John 14:3.


End file.
